What happened was, John ripped Paul’s bass from his hands and pulled off the neck—it was a shiny new Rickenbacker, which is probably why Paul got so pissed—then gnawed the end with his teeth until it was as sharp as a knife.

Classix Axe in Gainesville, Va., is a great little independent guitar shop - one of the few places in the region where you could pick up the kind of Rickenbacker 12-string that Roger McGuinn used to play in the Byrds.

That number may seem paltry alongside the 26 enemy planes downed by Eddie Rickenbacker in World War I, or the 40 notched by Richard Bong in World War II, or the 34 by Francis Gabreski across World War II and Korea.

Eddie Rickenbacker; our city founders such as Mary Brickell; the Cubans who engineered a political, cultural and economic boom in Miami and the region; the Latin Americans whose continued investment has kept our local economy alive during the recession; and the Brazilians who are setting the bar in business every day by keeping us sharp and hungry.